By Gershom Gorenberg
Yehiel and I met Elliott at the appliance repairman’s shed on a side street in South Jerusalem.
Elliott Horowitz, a historian at Bar-Ilan University, had already paid for the almost-new washing machine, with cash that friends have pledged to repay. We wrestled the heavy white hunk of metal into the back of Yehiel’s undersized station wagon, and set off—three guys with skullcaps and greying beards driving to Hebron with a washing machine for a Palestinian stonecutter.
It was Elliott’s idea. Nearly two weeks ago, he read an article by Gideon Levy, describing an incident in Hebron: Ghassan Burqan, a stonecutter living in the Israeli-controlled side of Hebron, saved for months and bought a washing machine. Since he’s not allowed to drive a car to his home – Palestinian vehicles are banned on that stretch of street – he parked nearby and carried it on his head with his wife and five kids, and his brother. Border Police stopped him and asked to see what was in the box. His brother got upset; men in uniform poured into the area; Ghassan ended up in jail, badly bloodied and accused of trying to steal a gun from the Border Police. The extremely unusual part is that a military court, and then an appeals court, ordered him released on bail. A Palestinian accused of attacking security forces normally doesn’t get bail. The judges didn’t like the prosecution case at all.
But the washing machine had disappeared.
Usually when you read something like this, Elliott had said, all you can do is get depressed. He was thinking of that a few days afterward in a crowded funeral hall in Givat Shaul, listening to eulogies for Gerald Cromer, who, among other things, was Elliott’s faculty colleague at Bar-Ilan, and an Orthodox peace activist. Gerald, who spent his career seeking to understand the secret mechanics of violence and extremism, was also a founder of Kehillat Yedidya, the progressive Orthodox synagogue to which Yehiel and I belong. At age 63, he was diagnosed with cancer and died within a few weeks.
Let’s buy a washing machine in Gerald’s memory, Elliott suggested to me. It seemed like a good way to honour him, because if Gerald were around he would have done it himself. I sent out an email to several dozen friends from the synagogue, offering them the chance to contribute, and quickly ran into a problem unusual among fundraisers: Too many people wanted to give. I had to close the list.
Yehiel, who works for Rabbis for Human Rights, offered to drive the washing machine down, and we found ourselves on the road to Hebron, driving past the checkpoints, the orchards and vineyards on the ancient terraces carved in the green hills, and the yellow stone-faced apartment buildings of the settlements—packed together like protesters at an immense demonstration against a reasonable future. At the checkpoints, the soldiers surely assumed we were three settlers. We did not stop to disabuse them of their stereotypes and explain why we had a washing machine in back.
We came in via Kiryat Arba, the settler town crowded up against Hebron. Kiryat Arba is a quietly nightmarish place. Elliott, a calm man who has carefully documented and footnoted the history of violence, had his camera, and we stopped at the park dedicated to Meir Kahane, described in an inscription as one who loved Jews, with no mention of his volcanic hatred of Arabs. Inside the park is the grave of Baruch Goldstein, physician and mass murderer, who gunned down 29 Palestinians as they recited Ramadan prayers in the Tomb of the Patriarchs-Ibrahimi Mosque in 1994. The gravestone describes him as having “clean hands and a pure heart.” Kiryat Arba is a place where light has been transmogrified to darkness, darkness to light, where faith in He who created all in His image has been reversed, rendered into its photo negative.
Musa and Ghassan met us in front of the Tomb-Mosque. That segment of Hebron is held by Israel for the safety of the small community of settlers within the city—people known among other settlers for their extremism. On top of the Palestinian store across the street from the tomb is a square concrete army emplacement with narrow slits at the top. On walls and metal shutters of closed Palestinian shops, settlers have scrawled “Death to Arabs” in Hebrew.
Musa and Ghassan crowded into the back seat with me, not easy because Ghassan is a big man and also because piled between the seats, we had bags of hametz – bread, flour, noodles, the leavened food a Jew removes from his house for Passover – that we’d brought for Ghassan.
We went up to the small apartment where Ghassan lives with his family. Ghassan’s two-and-a-half-year-old daughter came in and bashfully greeted each of us, taking a hand in hers, kissing it, and touching it with her forehead. Hebron, explained Musa, is a very traditional town.
Ghassan brought out cold drinks, apples and cucumbers. He showed us his legal papers, which I photographed with Elliott’s camera.
Elliott explained that we had brought the machine in memory of our friend, and that we came because we were religious – not despite being religious – because this is what we believe Judaism requires. He looked a bit uncomfortable. It shouldn’t be necessary to explain this. But in Hebron, madness is presumed, and sanity must be explained.
I’m not claiming that bringing one washing machine will bring peace, just as I wouldn’t claim that a donation to charity will end poverty. But as Rabbi Tarfon said, “You are not expected to finish the task, and you are not free to refrain from it.” I’m sure Gerald would be glad we brought the machine to Ghassan, and I’m grateful for friends who helped.
We traded phone numbers, and suggested ways that Ghassan could get a lawyer. We said goodbye, and then drove through the terraced hills back to South Jerusalem.
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Gershom Gorenberg is a senior correspondent for The American Prospect. He is the author of The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967-1977 and The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount. He blogs at www.southjerusalem.com. This abridged article is distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be accessed at www.commongroundnews.org. The full article can be found at: www.southjerusalem.com/2008/04/15/103.